Posts Tagged Paul McCartney

Review: Beatles Anthology 2025

December 20, 2025 at 6:59 am · Filed under Disney+, Documentaries, Music ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Disney + TV series review.

A sculpture of four musicians resembling the Beatles, posed on a modern bench, each holding instruments, in a stylized setting with abstract designs in the background.
JULY 10, 2008 – BERLIN: the wax figures of the “Beatles” with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon and George Harrison – official opening of the waxworks “Madame Tussauds Berlin”.

Introduction

The initial release of the Anthology albums and the eight-part television series shown on ITV were big events in 1995/6, even if the viewing figures for the latter steadily declined as the series progressed.

The showing of the final episode on New Year’s Eve when any Brit’ worthy of the name was down the pub or at a party was as inexplicable as the decision to release the new single Free as a Bird after most of us had already bought it on the Anthology One album, a decision that deprived them of their first number one single in a quarter of a century.

But the enterprise was still a big event, and one that, for a time, united both casual and hardcore fans. Before Anthology, the best television rendering of the Beatles journey we’d had was The Complete Beatles. That was good for its time, but here, finally were the three surviving  Beatles telling their story in their own words, together with archive footage and audio of John, as well as important contributions from significant others such as their Producer George Martin, and manager Brian Epstein, who sadly, like John, had to participate from beyond the grave, and former road manager and then Apple boss Neil Aspinall.

Through working on John demos donated by Yoko, and with a little help from Jeff Lynne and the, then, wonders of modern technology, the ‘boys’ provided us with new material in the form of the two singles, the aforementioned Free As A Bird and Real Love.

The third song they commenced work on, Now and Then, had to wait until 2023 to get its moment in the sun, and you can read my detailed review here The Last Beatles Song | Counter Culture

It was a project that had been long in the making. Aspinall had produced a rough ninety-minute first draft as far back as 1970, provisionally to be called The Long and Winding Road. Ringo’s comment at the time was that ‘It’s mostly us getting in and out of cars, and on and off planes.’

As they had only just broken up, and were wracked with business and personal differences, it was all way too soon, anyway.

But it was idea which would resurface periodically over the years. John even referred to it, still calling it The Long and Winding Road, though, in reality, neither he nor George was ever going to allow to be called after what was essentially a Paul solo composition, during his final round of interviews to publicise his and Yoko’s Double Fantasy album shortly before his tragic murder in December 1980.

Their interest in the project likely rose and fell in direct collation to the state of these differences.

George, conversely the ‘money Beatle’ as well as the ‘Spiritual Beatle,’ was finally driven to to commit to completing this unfinished business by financial concerns, following the collapse of his initially successful Handmade Films production company (Life of Brian, The Long Good Friday, Whitnall and I – not a bad resume), and some shoddy business management.

Conversely George, as well as being the ‘Spiritual Beatle’ was also the ‘Money Beatle’, just as he was, at various times, both the most and the least willing of the four to entertain the idea of a reunion.

On a personal level, my memory is of being drastically late for work through waiting for Chris Evans to play Free as a Bid, as he promised to do every five minutes or so on his Breakfast Show a day or two before its release. This was not quite the first ever radio play. That distinction had belonged to Anne Nightingale a few hours earlier, in the Radio Two ‘graveyard slot,’ but not even I was that dedicated. Or maybe I simply didn’t know that Annie would be playing it.

So, there I was, waiting for Chris to get on with it as the clock ticked ever closer to the start of my 10-8 shift.

In the end, I didn’t even bother to make up an excuse. My colleagues knew me well enough to forgive and forget.

First impressions? To be honest, I think I had an exaggerated idea of what could be done with a two-track mono tape recorded with the cassette player on top of the piano, even with a great producer like Jeff Lynne, and, presumably, the most cutting-edge technology then available to anyone, anywhere. Those ghostly John Lennon vocals took some getting used, though I came to love it, in time. The moment when George’s half-verse gives way to his cracker of a slide guitar solo is right up there as a truly great Beatles moment.

So, of course, I bought the CDs, and watched the series, and loved it, even if, as I’ve heard many fans comment, I thought the earlier episodes were better than the latter. This was largely, because, save for the ‘rooftop gig’ of January 1969, miming to Hey Jude and Revolution on the David Frost show a year earlier, and to All You Need Is Love at the worldwide One World TV broadcast a year before that, there is no live Beatles footage after the summer of ’66, and, it seemed, aside from that which became first Let It Be and then Get Back, a dearth of in-studio rehearsal and recording material.

The result of this, was a lot more talking heads in the latter episodes, and that can get wearing, even if the heads doing most of the talking are mostly the Beatles.

Still, the series was great, and when the DVD version finally came out, it came with a whole two and-a-half-hours’ worth of Extras material.

But we Beatles fans are never fully satisfied; and why should we be? So, as soon as Blu Rays became a thing, the clamour for a visual and audio upgrade began.

In addition, the release of the superb Super de Lux versions of the latter Beatles albums, Revolver to Let It Be, had shown that George Martin’s comment at the time of the original Anthology albums, to the effect that ‘That’s it, now. If we put anything else out it would have to be called ‘Scraping the Bottom of the Barrell’ because there’s nothing left in the can’, was plain wrong. Those albums had revealed that much better alternative takes of songs, or even previously unheard tracks, existed in the vaults of Abbey Road than were released on the original three-volume Anthology album.

Then, there was the little matter of Peter Jackson’s epic Get Back, which was released, again on Disney, in November 2022. The way that Jackson had taken Michael-Lyndsey-Hogg’s eighty minutes of grainy, narratively direction-less Let It Be, and made of it almost eight-hours of high-definition, sonically superb compelling drama (at least for us obsessives. Get Back is not really one for the normies) had raised the bar still higher by showing what could now be done.

My Get Back review can be read here A Month in the Life: Peter Jackson’s The Beatles Get Back reviewed | Counter Culture

So, here we are. We finally have our long-awaited Anthology upgrade. Maybe not on Blu Ray (another point I’ll return to shortly), but with Jackson again at the helm, with the sonic aspects handled by Giles Martin, whose work on those expanded album collections has been generally excellent (it must be in the genes), apart from the occasional misfire like his sacrilegious butchering of I Am the Walrus on the recent ‘Blue’ (1967-70) remix, there seemed very little that could go wrong.

So, did it?

 Positives

The short answer, is no. It’s pretty much positives all the way, for me.

Anthology 2025 is a vast improvement on the original visually. That had been made to be seen on the small cathode televisions of the time, and, watching recently the first four episodes from my DVD Box-set, it shows. The new version is very clearly made to be seen on the much bigger, digital HD screens now present in most of our homes.

Sonically, it’s also massively improved. I don’t possess a 5.1 surround system, but those who do, report that it sounds amazing.

There’s also a lot more John. Of course, he’s the only Beatle who didn’t live to take part in the project personally, but there are more audio and visual clips included than previously, so there’s more of a sense of him being involved. Obviously, a lot of care and attention has been taken in the selection of these clips, presumably at the urging of son Sean, who for the first time is listed among the producers of the series, alongside Paul, Ringo and George’s widow Olivia, rather than the now ailing ninety-three-year-old Yoko.

One disappointment among fans was when we learned, shortly before release, that we were getting an upgrade of the TV series rather than the extended DVD release.

But more is not always better, and I think that the series is much better paced than the old physical release version, where, based on my recent viewing of episodes 1-4, there was a lot of unnecessary repetition and padding. That makes it a better jumping-on point for those who are only now in the process of discovering the Beatles.

For someone like me, born in the same year as the release of Love Me Do, their first proper single, it’s hard to believe that such people exist, but they do.

And the series is still substantial enough to satisfy (more or less) us old obsessives.

It’s not a straight upgrade of what we saw on our TV screens either, and that’s another big positive.

As I’ve said, my own view of the 1995 series was that the earlier episodes were better than the latter, which was no doubt a contributory factor to those declining viewing figures. Now, my opinion has changed, with a definite preference for the latter episodes.

Leaving aside the new episode nine, which I’ll mention shortly, there is a lot more footage of Paul, George and Ringo being interviewed together while making the project than was previously the case, and that helps to fill out the latter episodes, and in a way that is interesting and enlightening.

As Ringo says at one point, ‘My Anthology would be different to Paul’s, Geoge and John’s would be different…’ I’m paraphrasing, but his basic point is that there can be no single ‘true’ story of the Beatles, and what was presented as their official history in 1995, and now, was always going to be the result of compromise between the main protagonists, which is one reason that the original took around four years to make, even once the decision to go ahead had been made.

We’ve long known that there were tensions present at those 1990s meet-ups and recording sessions, especially between Paul and George. But all three were at least self-aware enough, and accommodating enough to one another to acknowledge that there could be no single ‘correct’ version of the story, and this enabled them to move forward and get the job done as honestly as was possible.

Without watching the original 1995 series, the extended DVD cut, and the new version back-to-back, it’s impossible for me to be able to recount every change that has been made, though no doubt more than one super-fan will be painstakingly undertaking this task. But, from memory, definite changes include the appearance of John’s verse-demo for Yellow Submarine, a demo we didn’t know existed until the 2022 Revolver Super de Lux edition (previously, this had been thought to be primarily a Paul song), the replacement of Lindsey-Hogg’s Let It Be footage with clips from Jackson’s Get Back.

I also remember a Paul interview way back when he said that George’s modesty had led to the omission of a whole section on his own development as a songwriter. This is now present and correct, and the series is all the better for it.

On then to that new episode nine. What we all wanted was lots of footage of the ‘Threetless’ working on Free As A Bird, Real Love and Now and Then, interacting together in and out of the studio, discussing the making of the series itself, more of them jamming together acoustically inside George’s modest home, and passing around the ukulele while playing and reminiscing about India in his equally modest garden.

And we get all that. Not enough, of course, especially of the development of new material from John’s mono-cassette demos. But, actually more than I expected. None of this footage has ever been seen anywhere, not on the DVD Extras disc, nor even in the darkest depths of YouTube.

We do get a little more of the indoor acoustic jam, and Aint She Sweet, sung originally by John on the ‘B’ Side of My Bonnie, the record that originally bought their existence to the attention of Mr. Epstein, has been added to the outdoor uke’ session, as has Jimmy Reed’s Baby What Do You Want Me To Do?

Amongst the newly added interviews with the three of them together that have been included for the first time, they address the question of whether the series could have been made in, say, 1975, with a resolute ‘No’ from all three. Too many business problems and personal issues existed. As late as 1988, Paul refused to join George, Ringo and Yoko in being present to accept the band’s admission to the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. John’s physical absence aside, the time was right in 1995.

The knowledge that George would die a mere six years after the completion of the series is a reminder of how important it is that they got together to do it when they did.

That their assertion that their issues were now behind them and they were now the best of friends, wasn’t strictly true, because the relationship between Paul and George remained complex, is unimportant when we know that both Paul and Ringo took the opportunity to say goodbye, separately, at George’s bedside shortly before his death in 2001, and at a property secretly owned by Paul, and made available to George so that he might spend his final weeks with his family away from possible press intrusion.

That John and George’s relationship soured after 1974, and that they never did quite resolve their differences, is also unimportant. The other three clearly loved and missed him, and, although we only get to see what they wanted us to see, those that remained were at least close enough to get the series made, and even to record together again.

There is something very special about seeing Paul and George harmonising together at the mic with the ghost of John singing lead in their headphones. As up and down as their personal relationship might have been over the years, their voices blended together as perfectly in their fifties as they had in their twenties.

And, in essence, through all the insanity they shared, the good and the bad, they remained those same kids who talked guitars and Elvis on the ‘86’ bus to school.

Ringo, of course, is always just Ringo, the perfect drummer for the Beatles, and often the glue that held three giant egos together.

‘I’ve loved hanging out with you guys, again’ he says in George’s garden, and you can tell he meant it. 

Each episode concludes, before the main credits roll, with the words ‘In Loving Memory of John and George.’ This was a nice touch. I’ve so far watched the whole series through once, and Episode Nine twice. It’s more than worthy of another monthly £5.99 subscription to Disney+.

Negatives

My biggest criticism concerns the Beatles ongoing relationship with Disney. How much more impactful could the series have been had it been free-to-air on mainstream TV, as it was in 1995?

This is made all the worse by Disney’s aversion to physical media releases. A fan-led campaign, orchestrated in large part by Peter Jckson himself, pushed them to make an exception for Get Back, though even then we got only a bare-bones repeat of the Disney stream, with no Extras, let alone the fourteen-hour cut Jackson insists he has ready to go (I believe Star Wars fans forced a similar concession for The Mandalorian). But I don’t think we’ll be so lucky with the Anthology. After all, we’ve had no physical release of the cleaned-up version of Let It Be, or of the Beatles ’64 and Eight Day’s a Week both recent(ish) additions to the growing Beatles-Disney canon.

There will always be a place in this world, contrary to what some believe, for real, physical items you can hold in your hands and put on your shelves, and when it comes to a phenomenon as culturally important as the Beatles, it should be seen as of the utmost importance that physical versions of all of their material, visual and audio, are permanently available and able to be revisited without having to maintain a lifelong subscription to Disney, Spotify or any other corporate conglomerate.

Some have commented that the AI techniques used to upgrade picture quality have at times led to the Beatles themselves taking on an air of visual unreality, overly pasty on the black and white, and almost cartoonish in some of the colour footage. This latter criticism was also made regarding Get Back. I don’t really see that myself. Maybe on the black and white footage, but what we lose in terms of ‘authenticity’ is more than offset by the increase in clarity. For instance, the famous Some Other Guy footage shot at the Cavern shortly after Ringo replaced Pete, has never looked better.

Incidentally, the latest Doctor Who Collection set, Series 13, Tom Baker’s second, looks bloody awful. I bought Series 12, and that looks great, but someone has got badly carried away with the ‘AI enhancements’ with this latest release.  Fortunately, Anthology has got it about right.

The Albums

This is primarily a review of the television series but, as in 1995, Anthology 2025 is a multi-media enterprise, with the original albums, 1-3, having been remastered, and a new Anthology 4 added, released on both vinyl, CD and available to stream. So, I suppose I should say a little about these too, though my listening experience has so far been limited to the tracks that interest me most.

Fortunately, Apple relented on their original decision not to make 4 available as a standalone release for those of us who are quite happy to stick with the original versions of 1-3, and not be compelled to fork out for an expensive boxset simply for an improvement in sound quality.

But even here, there is the valid criticisms that only 13 of the tracks on 4 have not already appeared on Super de Lux versions of the latter albums. I probably will buy the last volume on CD at some point, but even though I remain committed to physical media in all things, it’s not a priority. I’m quite happy to stream on Spotify for now.

From what I’ve heard, Giles Martin has done a decent job of improving the sound quality on 1-3, but I’m not a great fan of remastering or remixing outtakes, and I don’t expect, nor want material recorded on a 2-reel tape in Paul’s front room in 1960 to sound like it was recorded yesterday in a modern recording studio, even if that should become possible at some point in the future, which it certainly isn’t yet.

There’s a charm in LoFi, and it’d be a shame if technology was to advance so much that that was lost.

As for the ‘Threetle’ tracks Now and Then remains as it was in was when it was finally released two years ago, i.e. still great, the remixed Free as a Bird is good, though I still prefer the ghostly version I made myself late for work waiting to hear for the first time thirty-years ago, and Giles has made a complete pig’s ear of Real Love.

Personally, I think the material on 4 should have been scattered through the complete set rather than presented separately, as was done recently with the CD versions of the remastered and extended Red and Blue albums. That way, the chronological nature of the project would have been maintained.

I’ll offer Take One of In My Life as the standout ‘new’ track so far. I think I actually prefer the song without George Martin’s sped-up piano solo, which has always sounded out of place to me on the finished recording. Plus, Baby You’re A Rich Man, takes 11/12 (‘Bring some cokes in, Mal; and some cannabis resin’) and All You Need Is Love, take 1.

Still no sign of Carnival of Light, the one Beatles track that, unless you have been a part of the absolute inner-sanctum, you’ve never heard (ignore the many YouTube fakes). As much as I love Revolution 9 (the most widely owned piece of Avant-Garde art in history, as someone put it), I blow hot and cold on this. Paul had wanted it on Anthology 2, and perhaps made a case for it for the new Anthology 4, which would be the logical place for it to be. But those who have heard it, say that it’s nowhere near as good nor as beautifully structured as Rev’9. So, do we really need a fourteen-minute collage of random noises to be added to the canon? Probably not, but it’s bound to come out one day. Paul usually gets his way in the end, as with the belated completion of Now and Then. A four- or five-minute edited version, just to give us an idea, would have been a sensible compromise.

But take 20 of Revolution, the best take, the version that links Revolution 1 and Revolution 9 in a single song, should definitely have been there.

It’s a great collection, but the compilation ‘1’ (not to be confused with Anthology 1), or, even better, the remastered Red and Blue are better introductions to the band for new fans. And 13 unreleased tracks is not enough to satisfy the hardcore of fandom.

Plus, the fiftieth anniversaries of both Help and Rubber Soul have been allowed to come and go unmarked. That’s what we really want: Remastered versions of the canon albums, together with whatever outtakes remain worth hearing. But Apple rarely give us what we want nowadays. Sadly, the days when the Beatles left classic singles off albums so fans didn’t have to buy the same song twice, are long gone.

Conclusion

As I’ve already indicated, we true Beatles fans will always want more, and hopefully, as with Get Back, we will get a Bu Ray set which will enable us to watch Anthology whenever we want. Better still, unlike Get Back, we will get an extended version.

But, Disney aside, I’m happy with what we’ve been given, at least as far as the television series goes. It both looks and sounds great, the edit has been done tastefully, and to paraphrase Paul’s habitual response to those who criticise the length of the White Album, ‘It’s the bloody Beatles Anthology, so shut up!’

The Beatles Anthology series is currently streaming on Disney +.

Anthony C Green, December 2025

Promotional image for the novel 'Better Than the Beatles!' by Anthony C. Green, featuring bold text and a blue abstract cover design.

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Experience ‘Girls Don’t Play Guitars’ at Liverpool Royal Court

October 9, 2024 at 3:33 pm · Filed under Drama, Music, Rock, Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

By Ian Salmon Directed by Bob Eaton

Liverpool Royal Court Theatre, till 26th of October 2024. Book tickets here: https://liverpoolsroyalcourt.com/main_stage/girls-dont-play-guitars/

2,925 words, 15 minutes read time.

The play tells the story, through words and music, mostly the latter, of Merseybeat band The Liverbirds from their inception in 1962 to their break-up in 1968, with a brief update on the girl’s life after the split and a nice surprise at the end of its two-hour running time.

I didn’t do any research before the play, though I had an awareness of the band and a vague outline of some of their history, so I was unaware that the play had enjoyed a successful run at the same venue, with the same lead players, back in 2019. From some of the reactions of the mainly ageing demographic at the almost packed theatre, I wouldn’t be surprised if many in the crowd were returning customers.

After a couple of false starts, beginning in 1962 as The Squaws and then as The Deputones, with the earliest incarnation including Mary’s sister Sheila and Irene Green as members (both of whom went on to play in other Liverpool bands), the established line-up of Valerie Gell on lead guitar, Pamela Birch on rhythm guitar, Mary McGlory on bass, and Sylvia Saunders on drums was in place by the following year, the year that, through the ascendency of the Beatles, and lesser Brian Epstein managed artists like Gerry and the Pacemakers and Cilla, established Merseybeat as a national rather than simply local phenomena.

Girl groups weren’t, of course, a new thing in 1963. American artists like the Ronettes, the Crystals, the Shangri-las and the Shirelles had all enjoyed great success and greatly influenced the Merseybeat sound. The latter’s song Boys was a staple of the Beatles’ live set from their early days and throughout their touring career, being used as a rare vocal showcase first for Pete Best and then for Ringo Starr. Ringo, I believe performs it live to this day, and we also get a rousing version during tonight’s play.

But these hit girl groups were vocal-only outfits. They didn’t play guitars or any other instruments, either in the studio or live, that being largely the job of men, including, on the records, some of the top session musicians of the day (an exception was the great female bassist Carole Kaye who, as part of the legendary Wrecking Crew graced many of the top hits of the sixties).  

The titular phrase ‘Girls don’t play guitars’ is attributed to John Lennon, and he’s depicted in the play as saying this when introduced to the Liverbirds at the Cavern.

That was what made this band different: they were an all-girl foursome who did play guitars, and drums, as well as them all being accomplished singers, both individually and in harmony.

In retrospect, it seems inevitable that there would be an all-girl vocal/instrumental group on the thriving Merseyside music scene. But, although the Liverbirds’ billing as ‘The world’s first all-girl Beat-group’, which is repeated several times during the play, might be a touch hyperbolic, I can’t recall any that came before, or even, now six decades later, a great many since.

Like their contemporaries Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, for whom Ringo played drums before becoming a Beatle, the Liverbirds did not achieve great commercial success, their best effort being a number five hit in Germany with a cover of Bo Diddley’s Diddley Daddy.

They released two albums on the Star Club Hamburg’s in-house record label in 1965, so we do have a fair idea of how they sounded, which is more than be said for Rory and his group, of whom only some very Lo-Fi live recordings exist.

Guitarist/vocalist Pamela Birch wrote three tracks spread across these albums, but they were essentially a covers band, as were the Hurricanes, and again, in common with them, it’s mostly as a hard-driving live act for which they are fondly remembered among the sadly dwindling number of those who can truthfully say ‘I was there’,  as a part of the scene in Liverpool and Hamburg in the early and mid-sixties.

It was therefore essential, if the play was to be a success, that the music was done justice, and that through that the audience could experience something of the vibe that those attending a performance by the Liverbirds might have felt.

On this criterion, I can happily say that the play was indeed a resounding success.

It’s obvious from the beginning that the four chief cast members are playing their own instruments and doing their own singing live, and they’re excellent, with great musicianship and superb vocal harmonies. Best of all musically was Mary Grace Cutler as Valerie Gell on lead guitar, even though she was responsible for the only musical fluff of the evening, on the intro to Roll Over Beethoven. But that made the music more real as, had you been there at the time you would have expected the occasional fluff from all of the local groups, including the Beatles.

I haven’t delved into the careers of any of these four actor/musician performers outside the confines of the show. But they sounded so tight together that it wouldn’t surprise me if they worked together on musical projects other than this, perhaps performing their own material.

The set for the play was designed as a standard stage set-up for a four-piece band, with amps, drums and microphones, all looking suitably period, from where the ‘Liverbirds’ performed their songs. At each side of the stage were two large, wavy cut-out guitars rising towards the ceiling, ending at a bank of small screens designed to look like retro 1960s T. V’s, upon which photographs and the small amount of footage that exists of the band, as well as topical signifiers that helped situate us in time were displayed.

At the rare, was a narrow raised area where the all-male supporting cast made their own musical contributions, with these supporting players also coming forwards in ones or twos to join the girls’ front-centre in the non-musical, dialogue-based sections of the play, playing multiple cameos, as the girl’s fathers, Mick Jagger, Ray and Dave Davis of the Kinks (the Liverbirds supported both the Stones and the Kinks on tour and Jagger and the Davis brothers also played with them on an unreleased, possibly lost, demo), Brian Epstein, Bob Wooler, a pivotal Merseybeat figure who is unfortunately best remembered for being beaten up by John Lennon at Paul McCartney’s twenty-first birthday party and, once we get to Hamburg, Klaus Voorman and others. These dialogue scenes tended towards the comedic, and were sometimes rather perfunctory, although they were well-performed and efficiently accomplished their role of relating the band’s story as a coherent narrative.

Less successful and the weakest element of the play in my view, was the narrative songs performed by the boys at the back in a sub-Merseybeat style, sometimes including little snatches of Beatles songs, such as the intro to I Feel Fine or a quick ‘Beep, Beep, Yeah’ and the like. They weren’t long enough to get the Beatles lawyers onto the productions back, but they were long enough to be annoying and, in my opinion, the cheesy lyrics of these original songs added nothing to the production, although they were played and sung well enough.

The acting itself was good all-around and did a decent job of giving us a sense of the environment in which the girls lived and played, partly through mentions of bygone Liverpool landmarks like Hessy’s music shop, and the Littlewoods Pools building, which once employed thousands of young women, and the dilapidated shell of which is still standing just down the road from me.

As we move through the Liverbirds story, the unchanging nature of the stage-set is perhaps another slight weakness of the production. We are told that we’re now in the Cavern or at the Star Club on the Reeperbahn in Hamburg, but with nothing visual, besides the contents of the faux-T. V screens, to reinforce these switches of location. The play is fast-paced enough for me to happily suspend belief, but I did feel that if cost or logistics meant that only one set was feasible, then something a little grittier may have been better. After all, the Cavern and the clubs on the Reeperbahn were noted for their grittiness and in the latter case for the ever-present hint of violence.

If the play is to be believed, the girls passed on the chance to be signed by Brian Epstein by agreeing to a residency, against his advice, at the Star Club in 1964. Liverpool bands had of course been making the trip to Hamburg for around six years by this point and it would still have been something of a right of passage, as well as an amazing adventure for four young working class girls, though with the Beatles having performed at the Star Club for the final time in December 1962, and even the likes of Gerry and the Pacemakers having moved on to much bigger things, the Hamburg scene was past its zenith by the time Liverbirds made the trip.

The story of how the girls raised the money for the fair to Hamburg led neatly to one of two moments of audience participatory hissing when the cast revealed that one Jimmy Saville helped them out by securing a little paid national exposure in the Sunday People. We were assured that he didn’t ask for anything in return from them, perhaps because, at between seventeen and twenty-one years old, they were a little above his preferred upper-age range.

The second well-deserved hiss of the night came when we were told that, towards the end of their time together, another regular performer in the Hamburg clubs was Paul Gadd, still two or three years away from becoming Gary Glitter.

What was unusual about the Liverbirds among the Liverpool bands, apart from the fact that they were girls who played guitars, was that, once they made it to Hamburg they never really left, though they did tour extensively elsewhere in Europe. Three of their members even continued to live Germany after the band split in 1968.

‘Girls Don’t…’ is more of a nice family night out than a work of social realism. It must have been hard to be female performers on the Reeperbahn scene, and this is indicated through some of the dialogue and straight narration, though not explored as deeply as it might have been.

It’s a positive play, and through the excellent chemistry between the cast we get something of the thrill it must have been to be four girls coming of age away from the restraints of family, enjoying the acclaim of audiences, drinking, partying, indulging their healthy sexual appetites, and discovering, as the Beatles and others had before them, that tiredness could be alleviated by a little yellow pill or two.

(The Catholic Church also has a cameo in the play, in the form of Mary’s Parish Priest. Mary was still considering becoming a nun when she set off for Hamburg, though this is another theme which could have been developed further)

By 1967, musically, the Liverbirds were in a musical time warp, still playing mostly American covers from the late fifties/early sixties. They were never going to be in the vanguard of the psychedelic revolution, nor, I suppose, did they want to be. But they did get stoned with Jimi Hendrix because he’d heard that Mary rolled the best joints in Hamburg, although she didn’t smoke them herself, we are told, and it’s a nice moment when this story is relayed to us, as suitably vivid colours swirl on screens above us.   

The play becomes more poignant after the interval and the closer we get towards the end, as the focus switches from the good times to the fragmentation and final dissolution of the band.

We learn that the first to leave was drummer Sylvia after she fell pregnant and did what most girls did in that situation at this time, she got married and swapped her ambitions for the role of housewife and mother.

That this decision had to be made on the eve of a Japanese tour, added an extra layer of resigned sadness to this part of the story.

The band continued, and the actors made it clear that the Liverbirds still had their moments, but that it could never be quite the same when the line-up had lost one of the original four.

In the most touching scene of the night, we discover that Valerie was the next to leave after her fiancé was paralysed from the neck down following an accident that happened while he was driving back from his eighteenth birthday party. The band was on stage at the Star Club at the time, extending their set as Valerie eagerly awaited the arrival of her boyfriend.

The remaining two originals, Sylvia and Pamela, carried on for a while with ‘whoever Manfred’ (their manager) could find, until finally calling it a day, and beginning their lives post-Liverbirds, with only Pamela continuing in music, still performing and working in other capacities in the Hamburg clubs. She also struggled greatly with addiction to alcohol and cocaine, though this isn’t mentioned in the play, contributory factors to her relatively early death, aged sixty-five in 2009.

Before the last song, regret is expressed that they never got the chance to perform together just one more time, announcing the song as the reunion the girls never had. Strangely, their Wikipedia entry mentions a brief reunion in 1998, though I’m not sure if this is an error or a rather unnecessary use of artistic licence by the writer.

As it turned out, this wasn’t the last song of the evening. At its conclusion, one of the players announces ‘two very special guests’ and the surviving Liverbirds, bassist Mary McGlory and drummer Sylvia Saunders arrive onstage to a fabulous reception, joining those who had so ably portrayed their younger selves for the truly final song of the night, a raucous rendition of Peanut Butter, obviously a favourite from their repertoire in their heyday.

If I had done any research before seeing the play, I would have known that Sylvia and Mary were still with us and that the two had performed this cameo throughout the 2019 run. Hopefully, they will do so throughout this new one-month run at the Royal Court. I suspect I would still have found their appearance moving if I had known it was coming, and I should add that the way Sylvia, a woman in her late seventies, pounded the drums was impressive.

After the song was over the lights went up and she, Mary and the cast received a well-deserved standing ovation.

The Liverbirds may only be a footnote in music history, but such footnotes deserve to be remembered and celebrated. Perhaps they were and perhaps they weren’t the ‘World’s first all-female Beat group.’ But they were indisputably four young working class girls trying to make it in a decidedly male environment, and as such they were trailblazers.

We should add that, for the time their image was also groundbreaking. It might have been expected that they would dress in the type of sexy, revealing outfits that was the norm among many female performers, and increasingly the fashion for young British women. But their choice of masculine shirts, trousers and thin ties (arrived at after some experimentation) was interesting, and something I would have liked to hear more about. It’s not a great surprise to learn that one of the band, Sylvia, after the failure of her marriage, should end up in a committed relationship with another woman, and though we get only a brief hint of it in the play, I’m guessing that they had a substantial following among gay women.

Omissions aside, Girls Don’t Play Guitars is a great night out with great music and solid acting with a special mention on the latter front to Alice McKenna as Mary McGory.

If the play is at all close to the truth, then those four young women had the time of their lives.

Girls Don’t Play Guitars can be seen at the Royal Court until October 26th. Hopefully, it will get the chance to tour outside of Liverpool.

Mary and Sylvia’s biography of the band, which is on my to-read list The Liverbirds: Our life in Britain’s first female rock ‘n’ roll band: Amazon.co.uk: McGlory, Mary, Saunders, Sylvia: 9780571377022: Books

Their two Hamburg albums combined in a single compilation. Many of these songs are performed in the play. The Liverbirds – Complete Recordings Star-Club Hamburg Sixties (Full Album 2009) (youtube.com)

Appearance on German TV, playing their No. Five-hit Diddley Daddy The Liverbirds – Diddley Daddy (Beat Club, 1965) (youtube.com)

Anthony C Green, October 2024

A short American documentary which fills out some of the gaps in the Liverbirds story, featuring contributions from Sylvia and Mary, and a brief clip of them performing with the cast during the 2019 run of the play  We’re Britain’s First Female Rock Band. This is Why You Don’t Know Us. | ‘Almost Famous’ by Op-Docs (youtube.com)

 A BBC Breakfast interview with Mary and Sylvia from March this year Sylvia Saunders, Mary McGlory (The Liverbirds Members) On BBC Breakfast [14.03.2024] (youtube.com)

And The Liverbirds own YouTube Channel (2043) The Liverbirds – YouTube

Anthony C Green, October 2024

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Lyrics to Live By Keys to self-help – notes for a better life

August 2, 2018 at 1:17 pm · Filed under Books, Spirituality/Philosophy ·Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

IT’S often said that the best ideas are the simplest. And this is certainly the case with the idea behind Lyrics to Live By. Indeed, I’d go as far as saying that the idea behind the book is so simple it’s absolutely brilliant.

So what’s the idea, what makes it so simple and why is it literally a stroke of pure genius?

The idea’s so simple because it relates to something that we probably do every time we hear a song – and that’s to sing along to it and wonder what some of the lyrics actually mean.

This basic query about the meaning of the lyrics can also generate many other questions. For instance, how did the song come about, how long did it take to write, what is the writing process and what’s the idea behind the song? Why use the particular set of lyrics that appear? How personal is the song – and does it contain any hidden or subliminal messages?

With this in mind, the publisher of Lyrics to Live By has asked Tim Bragg to interpret the lyrics of a dozen songs. Ten songs were provided by the publisher whilst Tim chose Paul Simon’s Slip Slidin’ Away and one of his own compositions, Some Answers.

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For those who don’t know, Tim Bragg is a multi-instrumentalist and a writer of songs, novels and short stories. Indeed, he has several albums and books to his name. He also has a deep interest in English and green politics and is the founder of English Green – https://www.facebook.com/groups/167522623276444/?ref=br_rs – which describes itself as ‘a group interested in ecology and its relationship with all aspects of human activity. How we co-exist with the flora and fauna and how we conduct ourselves in an ecologically healthy manner and how we achieve a spiritual and material well-being are of particular interest’.

Tim is also a really deep thinker – he describes himself as “the eternal outsider” and has been described as “a provocative intellectual renegade”. He is also interested in issues relating to free speech and English culture, previously describing Stratford-upon-Avon as his “spiritual home”.

In his Foreword, Bragg sets the scene by highlighting the importance of music:

‘But we are drawn to particular songs and musicians who seem to speak to us. They really do help guide us through life and come to our aid when most needed. At our lowest, a song can be played over and over, and this repetition seems to heal. When we are blue a blues song seems to do the trick. And the very personal nature of a song makes it effective for our own personal situation – bad/good or otherwise. I am thankful to the musicians who wrote songs that helped me through difficult times: the end of a love affair … for instance’.

I’m sure we’ve all wondered, why certain lyrics have the ability to strike a chord deep inside us. Indeed, every reader could probably suggest the lyrics of several songs which have really touched them – almost in a spiritual way. To me, it simply illustrates the beauty and power of song. However, has it always been like this – and will it be like this forever?

The lyrics Tim comments on are really varied – they include those from Hey Jude, Stairway to Heaven, Wicked Game and Big Yellow Taxi. The musical genres covered are also fairly broad. Writers include Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, John Lennon and Paul McCartney of the Beatles, David Bowie, Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell.

I’m not going to give you any details of what he makes of any of the lyrics (and I know that this is extremely strange for a review!) as I want to encourage readers of Lyrics to Live by to really think for themselves. That’s because we live in a world where all sorts of information is readily accessible and Wikipedia is king. Such easy access to information is very much a double-edged sword. On the positive side it enables folks to learn about more-or-less anything under the sun. On the negative side, I fear that many folks are – or have – lost the ability to question information and think for themselves.

Earlier I mentioned that Tim is a very deep thinker, and this is certainly borne out in how he interprets the lyrics. I must admit that I’d often sing along to a song and spend a few minutes contemplating what the lyrics mean. But to actually sit down and to probably spend hours really analysing the lyrics is probably an art form in itself!

This is the first time I’ve read an examination of lyrics to such a high level. Indeed, Tim noted that the process was ‘almost as if meditating’. I really do think that most people will be in awe of (or even shocked at) the depth of thinking employed here. Whether you agree with Tim is open to debate. However, it would really be interesting to know what readers think of his in-depth interpretations.

Lyrics to Live by also poses many questions in itself. I’m not too sure if this was the original intention or simply a by-product of the subject matter?

For instance, I’d particularly like to know how and why the particular songs – and more importantly, the individual lyrics – were chosen by the publisher? I also wondered if there was any sort of thread linking the artists? I presume they must mean something to the publisher, but what? Are they in some way personal, or do they contain any hidden or subliminal messages? Indeed, does Tim’s interpretation of the lyrics match those of the publisher, or are they wildly different? Furthermore, I found it interesting that Tim looked at the lyrics of one of his own songs – I wonder if this was therapeutic in any way?

The Foreword mentions Tim’s admiration for Phil Lynott and Van Morrison, who ‘have certainly helped me through my life’s journey’. Yet neither of them feature in the book. This got me wondering what artists would any of us choose to analyse– and why?

A couple of other things also came to mind whilst reviewing the book:

Firstly, Tim Bragg is a multi-instrumentalist and is comfortable with different genres of music. With this in mind, I presume that a Heavy Metal singer would be more at home looking at the lyrics of a Heavy Metal song. The same would presumably go for a Folk musician with Folk lyrics. However, what would happen if you gave the Heavy Metal and Folk singer the lyrics to a Country and Western song? Would the change of genre completely throw them – or would they both apply the same thought process, successfully analyse the lyrics and manage to overcome the change in musical style?

Secondly, this review has thrown up many unique and interesting ideas and questions. They all lend themselves to a series of books looking at various lyrics and their meanings. I’d love to read the thoughts of other artists – and, in particular, independent artists – in the very near future. Here’s hoping that the first follow-up book is at the planning stage already.

Reviewed by John Field

Lyrics to Live By is available as a Paperback or E-book from all Amazon stores

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